At Chemical Weapons Depot, the Target Is Tenants

By JAMES BROOKE

Published: November 24, 1996

PUEBLO, Colo.—
Among the real estate salespeople who have worked to dismember the nearly 300 military installations that Washington has closed in the last decade, Charles J. Finley faces one of the toughest challenges.

It is his job to market 6.5 million square feet of space in empty buildings at the old Pueblo Chemical Depot, which holds 10 percent of the nation's chemical weapons. The inventory includes steel-reinforced concrete igloos that once held conventional munitions, cavernous warehouses that held confiscated Nazi artwork and a 156,000-square-foot building that was used to maintain Hawk missiles.

At its peak in the Korean War, the depot bustled with 8,000 workers. Last year, the Army ended all activities on the base, except for an isolated storage area for chemical agents where 185 people work. That compound holds about 100 igloos, earth-covered warehouses for 5.2 million pounds of mustard gas, the nation's fourth-largest stockpile of chemical weapons.

The base has such an abandoned air that the Russians did not even bother to return this year for an annual inspection mandated by a 1987 missile disarmament treaty.

But under the bright sunshine of an afternoon on the plains of southeastern Colorado, the ever optimistic Mr. Finley surveys the cold war ghost town and foresees a bustling center of light-manufacturing plants and warehouses for regional distributors.

''They don't build this kind of stuff anymore,'' Mr. Finley said, patting the one-foot-thick steel door of an igloo that once housed explosives. ''The Army says it would cost $1 million to build one of these today.''

Wine storage, mushroom farms, garages for antique cars, a truck-driving school and a ''tough love'' camp for juvenile delinquents are some of the ideas that proponents suggest for the rows of igloos.

''A hospital with a kazillion records,'' proposed Mr. Finley, who recently negotiated $1,000-a-year igloo leases with Pueblo Community College for furniture storage. ''Or food commodities: onions, beans, potatoes, wheat. This could help the farmer.''

Using the 80-foot-long igloos as warehouses, farmers could maximize profits by selling crops off season.

''With storage in these conditions, you can conserve the color on the bean, and the farmer can get a better price,'' Mr. Finley said, noting that the igloos maintain year-round temperatures of 55 to 60 degrees. Recalling a trip to a former Army depot in Sidney, Neb., he said, ''They blow the wheat in the top of the igloos and then take it out of the bottom.''

The Army, which has the final decision over the depot, has yet to declare whether the igloos can be used to store food.

Ross Vincent, an environmental consultant who works with the Sierra Club, rolled his eyes at the thought of a rental market for commercial space cheek by jowl with a chemical weapons depot. ''They are going to have significant difficulty renting space until the weapons are destroyed,'' said Mr. Vincent, a chemical engineer.

To Mr. Finley, such critics are spoilsports.

''We had one small leak last week, and it was business as usual at the depot,'' he said, referring to two rounds of munitions that leaked gas in the tightly guarded G block. In 40 years of handling and storing chemical weapons, the depot has not recorded a serious injury or fatality.

Fearing that people who have watched too many James Bond movies might want to steal a truckload of mustard gas, the Army has surrounded the G block where it is stored with electronic sensors and a double fence. Security vehicles intercept cars that approach that isolated corner of the depot.

In the last decade, 12 leaks have been detected among the 780,087 gas-filled projectiles. Workers in special suits wrap airtight steel containers around the leaking rounds.

''We do routine monitoring of all the igloos in G block,'' said Mary Binder, a spokeswoman for the chemical weapons disposal program here. ''Nothing escapes into the atmosphere.''

Destroying the weapons could cost $1 billion, and that program is not expected to start for several years, Mrs. Binder said.

This fall, the Army started incinerating nerve gas weapons in Tooele, Utah. But earlier this year, Congress suspended the building of new incinerators until alternative technologies have been tested.

With the destruction of the weapons here probably more than a decade away, the Army and Mr. Finley's Pueblo Depot Activity Development Authority have decided to move the real estate today. Renters have been found for half of the first 300,000 square feet that the authority took control of in February.

Columbia House, the entertainment company, rents one warehouse to store CD's and cassettes, as well as promotional materials.

''Pueblo is great for distribution,'' Mr. Finley said of the city, a major railroad junction. ''You can ship east, west, north, south. It's a Nafta hub!''

Infected by the boosterism, the base transition coordinator for the Defense Department, David Vigil, rapped the solid oak beams of a warehouse that once stored Nazi paintings and said, ''This building could last for perpetuity, at least.''

Photo: The warehouses at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado once held munitions, confiscated Nazi artwork and a maintenance plant for Hawk missiles. The buildings are being leased for civilian storage. (Tom Kimmell for The New York Times)